I don't know anything about the Chinese language edition of Forbes, but I initially subscribed to their English languange Forbes Asia because they had a US$9.95 year-long subscription--a super deal for an English language magazine delivered to China. However, I only ended up getting 2 of the issues. After complaining they sent some more magazines. Stupid or not, I subscribed again, thinking the magazines were getting lost because of the post office around my office (This is China). So had them sent to my home instead. I am getting 70% of the issues this year. Better, but still lower than the other magazines I subscribe to. For a magazine that specifically goes after English language readers in China they should be able to allow for Chinese characters on the mailing label, or mail directly from inside China rather than Singapore.

I got 100% of my 'Metropolis' magazine issues, and they definitely don't target China. But Forbes-Asia, it's hit or miss on getting my bathroom reading material.

I'm not much of a Forbes reader.

i think Forbes is more interested in people...who is doing what and where. If one wants to get current feed on important trends to watch out for,"Economist" is the one. If you are interested in people mobility and how much which CEO earns,then go for it.

PS.my fri once showed me an article on Al Gore and his award winning story on global warming. Very negative!

At the time there were several players who were competing to get the Forbes license for a PRC edition, but R. Chan was (of course; but IDG has deep pockets too) the only one able to put the large sum requested by Forbes on the table (the rather unique criteria for Forbes choice according to a chagrined competitor). Hang Lung's guys are smart businessmen (even if not publishers at all; but able to smell the flow of advertising money as many other hungry rats) and they just copied the very efficient and lucrative Fortune's business model invented by CCI/Tom Gorman in HK for Fortune (Time Inc.) years ago: i.e. controlled circulation managed from HK (i.e. free subscriptions), and offshore publishing (-no publishing license, anywhere-, just like advertising brochures; with possibly ghost editorial offices, partly hidden somewhere on the PRC territory, thanks to Internet-; a nice concept, frequent in the cyberspace, far much rarer for paper products especially with 100-200,000 audited readers -see BPA audits freely available online-), audited circulation (rather rare in the PRC; thus higher rates on their ad rate cards), and the last, smarter but riskier stage, printing and shipping discreetly the enormous mass of paper from Shenzhen to discreet workshops across the PRC for cheap mailing services (with a vague "import" paper stamped for a fee, with eccentric quantities, by an import company such as Zhong-Tu aka CNPIEC)
--- for Michael above, it is precisely the whole issue concerning the PRC concerning subscriptions, especially for products in simplified characters, targeting PRC readers: either costly individual mail from overseas, but with any of the local publishing or import hassles, or bulk imports, or far worse local publishing; besides the future and trend concerning paper magazines worldwide is free/very cheap subscriptions anyway, see the USA, even for consumers not only for B2B products, that's why subscriptions are so cheap in the USA for consumer magazines (90% of the market, as opposed to newsstand sales); they even give gifts with subscriptions, sweepstakes, etc.; publishers lose money for acquiring subscriptions, but then can show their list to advertisers to get the rates, or rent this list for a profit---.